


when the floodwater comes it ain't gonna be clear (it's gonna look like mud)

by necromantrix



Series: anthem for the already deceased [4]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Best Friends, Gen, far too long later i return with another fic in this series!!, this runs parallel with the end of the suffering game and that lunar interlude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 02:52:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11842446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necromantrix/pseuds/necromantrix
Summary: The sounds of the dead are gone, and neither of them has any idea why.





	when the floodwater comes it ain't gonna be clear (it's gonna look like mud)

       The Astral Plane doesn’t just get swallowed up in an instant, consumed into darkness and nothingness and all things bad. No. It’s much too early for that. The plane is taken slowly, and no one even notices at first; then they’re caught off-guard and it all goes to shit.

       Kravitz gets the alert while he’s in his office, filling out form after form. It’s second nature at this point, but it’s also terribly boring, and when he hears Julia’s voice over his Stone of Farspeech he’s grateful for the distraction.

       “Is, ah, everything all right?” he asks, and he hardly finishes the thought before she’s speaking again.

       “Something’s wrong. Very wrong. And not people-are-dying-too-fast wrong or death-counts-don’t-make-sense wrong. I mean…  _ wrong _ wrong.” The concern she feels is audible, and Kravitz pauses.

       “What do you mean,  _ wrong wrong _ ?”

\---

       The plane is dying.

       That’s what he  _ wants _ to say, but it’s too ironic and bitter and the words refuse to leave his throat. For a plane with no living things beyond a plant taken from the Prime Material Plane that sits on his desk, the way it’s meant to be seems awfully alive compared to what’s slowly taking over.

       The sky, normally a clear black, is grey. While there’s never any sun or moon or stars to provide light, it’s never dark except in color—but that spot in the distance, with all its black and rolling clouds, seems  _ dark _ . Lightless. Lifeless. It sends a chill down Kravitz’ spine, and he can feel skin fading away into bone around his clenched fists.

       Julia stands beside him in silence outside the Eternal Stockade, her gaze following the line of the endless sea. Normally it’s calm, a smooth mirrored surface, lights of souls floating beneath; today it’s choppy, like a lake before the rain, and the lights beneath are dim. She’s never seen it that way, and when she touches Kravitz’ arm and points it out, he realizes he hasn’t either.

       The sounds of the dead are gone, and neither of them has any idea why.

       “What do we do?” Julia asks, and Kravitz shakes his head in response.

       “I don’t—” Before he can finish the admission of unsurety, there are sounds of alarm from the building behind them, and the two turn around quickly. Nothing  _ looks _ amiss from where they’re standing, but then the door bursts open and someone comes barrelling out, followed by… shadows? They  _ look _ like shadows, except they’re  _ wrong _ . They’re thick and dark and unpredictable—and they’re not  _ dark _ , they have rainbows contained inside them and if they weren’t so frightening they might be beautiful. These shadows burst out the door behind the other reaper.

       And then the Astral Plane is in chaos.

       While the clouds on the horizon looked like the source of the darkness (and they are still rolling in, more rapidly now), the true threat came from behind in the form of clouds and black, opalescent tendrils that touched down and filled the plane with darkness, unseen. From around the edges of the building, Kravitz and Julia can see a thick layer covering the lake, inch by inch. It looks like oil, and there are people trapped in it—reapers Kravitz works with, secretaries Julia knows, souls that are supposed to be contained within the Eternal Stockade. All are being dislocated and removed, trapped in these oil-like shadows and dragged under into the dark depths.

       If the Stockade is empty and the shadows are looking for people to drag down, Kravitz and Julia are next in their path. He summons his scythe, his arm turning skeletal as the weapon is pulled from the ether. His other arm is outstretched beside him, pushing Julia behind him as the shadows draw nearer.

       As they draw within range, Kravitz begins to slice at them to strike them down. But there are many of them, and Julia lacks a weapon to help like she so badly wants to; slowly the two are edged backwards, their feet moving closer to the edge of the rough waters with every step they’re pushed back.

       Fear is a suffocating emotion for mortals. It closes throats and causes hearts to race in fragile chests. It’s difficult to escape the grasps of it once it sets in. For those who are dead and feel emotions more strongly, lacking necessary capacities to keep their feelings contained, fear is all-consuming. It blinds senses and nulls perception; it makes one reckless and vulnerable, and Julia is the first to pay for that mistake.

       Around the island the Stockade is located on, unnoticed, the tar—for that seems more accurate than oil, with the way it captures and refuses to let go—slowly seeped over the surface of the water so there is no chance of escape left. A black tendril rises from the tar behind Julia, snakelike and unseen. She feels the pull first before she realizes it’s grabbed her, and she screams as she reaches desperately for Kravitz. Fingers grab onto black fabric, grasping desperately as he turns to face her with wide eyes. His form slips, flesh giving way to bone as the panic and fear take him over. His bony hand turns to grab her forearm, feet digging into the dirt beneath his feet. He tries to pull her back towards him, fighting the strength of the tendrils, but it’s not enough.

       His grip slips as he’s pulled backwards, and Julia sinks below the shadow-covered surface of the sea.

       “ _ No! _ ” he yells desperately, turning to cut himself free from the shadow’s grasp. The scythe cuts through them quickly and easily, as though they’re nothing but paper. Without hesitation or thought beyond willing skin over bone so he doesn’t just sink to the bottom, he dives in after Julia.

       The tar is a heavy, thin layer atop the water that’s moved by the waves but seems to stretch with them—it never thins, and he can feel the stuff grab onto him as he dives through it. Kravitz wonders then, briefly, if he can drown. He’s never had a reason to question it before; he knows he can’t die, but it’s possible for his physical form to be destroyed. While pain isn’t necessarily a factor, he can still  _ feel _ . If he gets cut in half or loses a limb, he feels it without it hurting. Would drowning be the same way?

       Would he be able to escape if he was drawn back into nothing more than a ball of light, a soul without a form?

       Those thoughts produce more fear, and fear produces more adrenaline—or some equivalent in his manifested form. His hands grab at the hand-like tar that has him held under, ripping it free from his forearms, his shoulders. He bends to tear his legs free before quickly kicking to push himself further under the water and out of the shadows’ reach.

       It’s dark beneath the surface and impossible to see, but he tries to locate Julia despite the hopelessness rising within him. She might be gone for good, and so is everyone else. If he gets stuck down here, he may be gone for good, and no one will know. There are no answers and there are hardly any questions except  _ What? _ and  _ Why? _ .  The Astral Plane is being destroyed and there’s no way to stop it.

       Kravitz feels his chest tighten as he runs out of air, and he knows there’s no use. Julia’s gone, is lost in the darkness somewhere beneath the surface. His eyes sting, and he doesn’t know if it’s the water or tears.

       With one last futile gaze into the pitch dark, he kicks himself towards what he hopes is the surface. He has to fight his way back through the tar as it struggles to hold him down; at some point on his way down he dismissed his scythe, and he wishes he had it now. Instead he is forced to use nothing but his hands to tear and his feet to kick his way free. He can’t breathe and his limbs are tired and heavy, but he can’t give up, he  _ can’t _ . There’s so much to fight for: to find out what’s going on and to stop it, for Julia, and to get out of this plane and check on the Material plane, for Taako. The thought of Taako sends a new wave of fear through him— _ What if the Prime Material Plane is under attack, too? _ —but Kravitz swallows that fear down. For now, he has to survive.

       Finally,  _ finally _ , his lungs aching as he gasps in a breath, he breaks the surface. The fight’s not over, and he can feel the tar struggling against his newfound freedom, but he’s not giving up either.

       Above him, in the storm-filled sky, he sees something, and he thinks he must be hallucinating because he sees  _ Taako _ . He can’t be sure, for as soon as he sees him his vision becomes black again as he’s pulled under with hardly enough warning to gasp in another breath.

       Kravitz feels hopeless, for once. He feels unable to escape. He feels himself being held under and he can’t think of a way out and—

_        No. _ He silences those thoughts, pushing aside roiling emotion for the sake of clarity. He just has to get his hand above water and he can…

       He reaches a hand up, towards the surface of the water, doing what he can to push through the oil, and…

       Flesh melts away into bone and the scythe appears in his hand as it breaks the surface; the sharp blade makes it possible to tear through the shadows like they’re nothing, and it’s the shift in the tides he needs to break his way to the surface and to the solid land of the island. The shadows don’t give up, sending tendrils and hands his way, but he slices through them, reinvigorated with anger. These  _ things _ destroyed his plane and took everyone away; he’ll get to the bottom of this. He has to.

       Kravitz does, however, recognize that he can’t stand against them forever, and so he seeks refuge inside the Stockade. He turns to slice at some more shadowy arms before he ducks indoors. The door closes with a slam, the bolt even louder as Kravitz tosses it into place. He collapses back against it, able to hear the tar-like shadows slamming against it relentlessly on the other side. The door doesn’t budge, and he allows himself a slow exhale of relief.

       But there’s still work to be done. The other planes could be in jeopardy, and there could be answers there. He pushes himself upright from the door, tearing through the air with his scythe like he’s done countless times before.

       Nothing happens. A shiver runs through his bones before he tries again. Still nothing. Not even a hint of the rifts he’s so used to. He tries a third time, unable to control his fear enough to knit flesh back over bone, and he drops down to one knee. A skeletal hand reaches into his cloak pocket, removing a handful of black raven feathers kept there. He organizes them quickly into an even circle and he waits.

       “My Queen?” he asks. There’s no response, and he tries again, subtly adjusting the feathers to be a more perfect circle. “My—My Queen? Are you there?” His voice cracks, and he collapses back into a sitting position when there’s no response again, his scythe clammering to the stone ground beside him. Slowly, dark skin covers bone as he pulls his knees tightly to his chest and wraps his arms around them. He does his best to breathe slowly, to keep himself calm, but he can’t. His forehead presses to his knees, tears welling in his eyes and running freely down his face.

       He’s used to the dark. He’s been in the dark for longer than he can remember. But for the first time in a long, long time, the dark terrifies him.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Twin Sized Mattress by The Front Bottoms!
> 
> This fic is so overdue and I am so, so sorry. I'm glad it's done, though, and there will be one more in this series (that will come in a few days, as it's spoilery for the finale that I still need time to process). Rest assured that this series will have a wrapped-up ending soon, though.


End file.
